Tag Archives: flash-fiction

Out in the hall we stand on shaky feet. Though much of the vertigo feeling has gone away, this host body is weak. Perhaps it is my presence that drains the energy, the fact that two should are now sharing a bodily apartment. For now we are roommates trying to get along until one moves out. Eventually, one will dominate the other. I cant imagine both minds swirling around in this flesh, bumping into each other and wondering who’s thoughts are whose.

We head down the empty hall, me inside the frame of Joey Mattson, the guy everyone else wants to be. And now I’m him. I could probably get any girl in school now. They all adore him. Even the teachers like him. The sky is the limit on what is achievable. But first, Joey thinks he needs to go to the bathroom. And so I relax, letting him go to take care of whatever bodily functions needs attention.

No one is in the restroom. He looks at himself in the mirror and splashes water in his face. It’s a weird feeling for me, seeing myself and knowing the face isn’t mine. This one doesn’t have acne, nor scars associated with it. The eyes are a different color, the cheeks higher, and when he smiles to check his teeth, I can’t help that they are much whiter than mine were. It takes some effort but I force hm to look down at his body. Even with clothes covering it, I can tell the physique is more appealing than mine ever was. I no longer inhabit a lanky body. Its easy to tell Joey works out. He is in top physical form. No wonder he’s popular with the ladies.

My thoughts must have been bleeding into his own for the vertigo returned and he hurried into a stall to throw up. He retched but nothing came. I could his confused mind asking what was wrong with him. I wanted to answer him back, ‘You aren’t just you anymore.’ I also wanted to direct him to get it together and just accept this. Go find the girl I jumped into this body for anyway. I don’t know if it was my thoughts or how he was feeling physically, but he went to retch again.

The bathroom door opened and someone came in. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stepped out of the stall, expecting to see a teacher. But it wasn’t one of the faculty. It was the football jock from class.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” my host replied. “No, I’m not sure.”

The jock walked to one of the urinals and unzipped. In the midst of relieving his bladder, he asked, “so, what’s wrong? You feel sick?”

“Yeah, a little, I guess.”

“You going to hurl?”

My host laughs. “No. I thought I was. I’ll be okay.”

The jock zips back up. “I hope so.”

“Yeah, me too.”

We all walk to the sinks, both guys washing their hands. Nothing is said for a moment.

“How did you get out of class?” My host asks.

“Oh that was easy. Teachers get uneasy when you say you cant hold it any longer. I threatened to piss in my seat.”

They both have a laugh at this and then proceed to dry their hands off at the wall mounted dryer.

“You better go back soon then,” Joey says. “It doesn’t take that long to pee.”

“Yeah, I guess I better. You sure you’re okay?”

I nod my head, or at least Joey does. I am just a spectator inside his body. And then I fell it. A butterfly kind of feeling, that spreads through my stomach and down my body. I wonder if he’s going to retch again right in front of this guy. Maybe hurl up on his shoes.

The jock smiles and turns to go, then stops. “I don’t care if you threw up or not.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

He grabs my host’s face in his hands and kisses him.

+++++

Missed an episode? Ghost Boy Blues now has its own main page so you can catch up or start at the beginning. Find it Here

“Where’s Jack,” the little girl asked, finishing off her bowl of oatmeal and looking up at her mother hopefully.

Mother smiled. “He’s outside chopping wood.”

“He hasn’t left?”

Mom tried to muster a smile. “Not yet.”

Her daughter looked up from her breakfast. “But he will?”

“Eventually, I suppose.” She turned from her child to the sink. “They always do.”

The little girl put her spoon down and slid her chair from the table. “I wish one of them would stay. I always miss them when they leave.”

Then she was bounding out the door for the wood pile and the man who waited there.

“I do too, Sophie,” her mother said in her absence. “I do too.”

Sophie ran on ten year old legs around the back of the house where a man stood over a pile of logs he was in the process of splitting. Though it was fall and a little chilly at the base of the mountain, he worked shirtless, his muscles rippling with each swing of the axe.

The child watched him for a moment as he worked on the wood and then said, “I hope I have muscles like yours when I grow up.”

The man smiled as if noticing her for the first time. He looked at her, his sky blue eyes bright in the morning sun. “From what I have seen that would probably make people uncomfortable. Little girls aren’t supposed to dream of being men.”

“Mama says women can do things better than men. And that girls aren’t afraid of com..commi…”

“Commitment?” Jack suggested.

“Yes, commitment.”

Jack lifted his axe and brought it down on a log. “Well, your mom is probably right.”

The shout startled the girl, and she turned to see her mom standing there with two coffee mugs in her hand.

“That’s not the way girls talk to grown men,” her mom scolded. “Now go inside and get ready for school.”

“He’s not a grown man.”

“Sophie! Mind your manners and do what I tell you.”

The girl hung her head. “Yes mam.” She looked up at Jack who had a look of amusement on his face. “I’m sorry Mr. Jack. I shouldn’t have said that about grown up.”

The man sat down the axe and walked over to her. He jostled her hair with his hand. “It’s okay, wildfire. Maybe I do have a lot of growing up to do still. I’ve only been here a couple of weeks. Still not used to this air.” He winked and looked to the blue expanse of sky overhead. “I’m so used to cramped spaces and a faster pace of things.” He smiled at her reassuringly. “I’ll get used to it. But right now, you better do what your ma says.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied and headed off to the house.

Jack put his hands on his hips and looked at the girl’s mother. “Is that for me,” he asked, pointing at one of the cups in her hand.

“Um yes, of course,” she replied, trying not to look at his bare chest. She attempted to ignore how the sweat ran in rivulets down to his abs, disappearing into the top of his faded black jeans.

He took the cup she offered and drank from it in spare sips. Some of it missed his lips and ran down his chin, but he seemed not to notice.

“Thanks,” he said. “How do you say it? It hits the spot?”

“Yes, that’s what we say, “ she agreed, hoping he had forgotten the interchange between himself and her precocious daughter. He handed the cup back and picked up the axe again, hefting it over his shoulder to return to the task of woodcutting. “So, what is this thing about kissing?”

She dropped both cups. “Um..I..you have to understand something…about children. Sometimes…they, um, say the craziest things.”

He nodded as if digesting some new kind of information. “Hmmm. And is this something they grow out of?”

“Hopefully so.”

“This kissing thing then?”

“Don’t worry, “ she replied, her voice catching in her throat. “It will pass. Nothing to concern yourself with.”

He could tell she was nervous, that this was an uncomfortable kind of topic for her. He knew enough to change the conversation before it made her even more uneasy..

“How about them Cowboys?”

“Excuse me?” She asked.

“I saw that on the…what do you call it?…television. When you want to avoid a subject?”

“Um..yes, of course. How about them cowboys.”

She tried to muster a confident smile and turned to go back inside. She needed to check on Sophie and drive her to school or they would be late. She took one last look at Jack and almost felt sorry for him. Where he came from, on his planet, kissing must have truly been an alien concept.

He is aware of me. He is trying to push me back out of his body, forcing me to be nothing but formless spirit again. But I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be unseen any longer. I want to be somebody. Even when alive, I wished to be be someone else, to stand in someone else’s shoes for awhile. Now fate had granted that to me. Now I would finally live.

I stand my ground against his push and fight back. I catch a thought as it passes by. “What is wrong with me,” it asks. “I don’t feel good.”

“Probably just a virus or something I ate,” I suggest, and he buys it, just as if it is his own mind telling him, instead of an outside entity.

This calms him down, and the sense of alarm he felt dissipates. I sigh. He sighs. We are one. For a moment, I wish to look around, to take in everything and see how others interact or wish to interact. But I realize I am no longer the invisible one. I am in a body. I can be seen. I put a hand to my mouth and cough. It is loud enough to cause several of the students to look in my direction.

A girl in the corner wearing a gray leather trench coat and goth makeup smirks in my direction. Though she’s not the type that normally attracts me, it feels good to be noticed. Even one of the football jocks looks at me. He doesn’t smile the way she does, but he nods his head to acknowledge me, and that kind of recognition is nice as well. I think of coughing again, but change my mind. There has to be other less mundane ways to get myself noticed. Before I know it, I have thrown my arm up in the air and am waving my hand. It’s not me who is doing this though. It is my host.

The teacher notices and stops what he is doing. “Yes, Mr. Mattson. What seems to be the problem?”

“Can I be excused? I’m not feeling well.”

The voice sounds strange. It isn’t mine, that’s for sure. But it comes from within me. I can feel the vibration of sound in my host’s throat as it forms into words. It is a weird feeling, but no less strange than sharing a body.

Joey Mattson, one of the most popular guys in school, was excused with no problem. The popular kids could be excused forty times a day and no one said a thing, but if I’d still been alive and in my own body I’m not sure I would have been allowed to leave.

He grabs his books and stands up. It is kind of jarring, as if I’m being yanked to my feet. Vertigo sets in for a minute and I feel dizzy. It seems to swim over him too and for a moment I think he just might throw up. He turns around to look at the football jock, who now has a worried, sympathetic look on his face. The goth girl looks somewhat amused. My host hurries out of the classroom, taking me with him.

Another experiment in flash fiction, this little piece started with the first sentence at the starting gate of a timed writing exercise. I just start typing and let it rip. I quickly realized it changed from flash fiction to fan fic about the second sentence in. With that said I guess it can’t truly be flash, as in all fan fic you have some idea about events and characters before you start. Still, I do like what came out of the exercise and so I thought I’d share it. Hope you enjoy 🙂

“Waiting For The Cyclone”

She stands in the middle of the dirt road, the old farmhouse off to the left, the wide expanse of the prairie to her right. A hot afternoon breeze blows through her long brown hair. The hem of her gingham dress swirls around her legs, blown about by the same rhythmic wind that signals the coming cyclone. She has waited for this since childhood, keeping her lonely vigil, hoping the one that swept her away once before will return. They have told she is mad, perhaps “tetched in tha head”, but she knows her own experience as if it were written in a book or seen at the movies. It had swept her away before, far from the dying corn rows and starving animals of her Uncle’s farm. And though that had been years ago in childhood, as a young woman she longs for a similar adventure again, something to make her come alive and feel the impossible possibilities of youth. She has missed her friends from long ago, and has found herself unable to make new ones. She feels as if she is dying here, or will die alone at an old age always dreaming of something better, something more wonderful than any wizard could grant. What she needed was one more wicked witch and one less day of wasting away in her own longings. And so she waits for the cyclone, always on the horizon, yet never arriving, still hoping to find that “no place like home” kind of feeling.

I think everyone at one point or another has wished to wear another’s skin, to be someone else other than who we are. Call it envy for what another has, or perhaps just wanting to escape the dull or lonely existence that is our lives, but either way everyone has dreamt to be more than just us.

I think of this as I walk the halls, looking at every fellow student I pass. What would it be like to be the school’s star quarterback? The valedictorian? Or maybe just that party guy everyone wants to hang out with? Or what if I could be one of the teachers? Perhaps the principal? No, that would be weird. I know a lot of kids wish to be grown up, and I guess I have a few times myself, but most of the grown ups I know don’t know how to have any fun. It’s like they have forgotten something vital to happiness. I never wanted to be like either of my parents. It’s not that I don’t like them or anything; its just I don’t want to be them.

So if I am to attempt to inhabit another’s body it has to be a student. There are a few things that concern me about even that though. One, how much of me will be in control? Being in another’s body, will it be as an observer or will I be able effect change within that person by taking over their will or actions? Second, once inside, am I there forever? Or will I be able to shed that body when I choose and perhaps pick another?

These things bother me, but as there is no ghost manual, the only way to answer the questions before me is to go ahead and make the leap into the unknown.

I look up at the stars every night, searching the heavens for that one bright light that could take me back to yesterday. I know it’s a hopeless wish now, but I just want to change everything and everyone, to keep them from this sad state of being. I wish I had done something with myself in the classroom instead of sitting in the back, trying to avoid everyone else.

Maybe if I had interacted more, or made friends more easily, things would be different. Perhaps I would have had a girlfriend, or been popular in a clique of my own. But the truth is I was too scared and shy. I don’t know why this is, or why it has taken death for me to want to talk to others and make friends. I find myself wishing to communicate now, whereas before I just wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want to be picked on by the bullies. I didn’t want to be teased by the giggling girls. I didn’t even want to be called on in class. But all of those things happened anyway. And now I can’t seem to even leave the school grounds.

Another great cosmic joke. School was hell for me in a lot of ways and now it seems to have become my personal purgatory. I tell myself if I could only get out of here then my spirit could roam free the way it’s supposed to. Or at least that’s what I assume spirits are supposed to do when they no longer have a live body. Perhaps that’s it then, I need a live body to inhabit. Hmm.

I almost kissed her once. I was alive then, though not living. Not really anyway. I had a beating heart, a fairly intelligent brain, and yet I was the class cushion all the bullies wished to stick their pins in just to watch me squirm and bleed.

She never laughed like the other ones did. Perhaps that’s one of the things that attracts me to her now. Even though she was a year older and out of my league as far as looks and grades go, I couldn’t help but entertain fantasies of a different world where only she and I existed. But the truth is no such world exists. Girls like her don’t go for guys like me. Even when we’re alive. Being dead just complicates things even more.

But anyway, I was talking about how I almost kissed her once. I don’t think she was ever aware of it, to be honest. She was lost in her own little world, getting books out of her locker. She looked so beautiful that day in her school uniform. Though everyone was dressed like everyone else at school, she seemed to be luminous. There was a soft glow about her, and it was even more evident when someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around, flashing them a bright smile that could have lit up the whole room if the power had gone out. Of course, I’m using metaphors here, but my thoughts at the time were anything but, for in that moment I was compelled to leave my lonely spot in the hallway, walk right over there and plant one right on her cheek. On her lips if I somehow missed.

I didn’t do it though. I stayed right there at my own locker. Frozen. Unable to move, or even smile in her direction. Call me chicken shit, call me a loser. They both fit. For when I really thought about it, the only image that came to me, the only response I could imagine was the look of horror on her face as she saw who kissed her. The rearing back of her hand, or possibly the fist of another boy who’d come to her rescue because shed been assaulted by the creepiest boy in the school.

Its funny because that’s how everyone thought of me when I was alive and visible to everyone who wished to humiliate or pick on me. But I guess the joke’s on them after all. Being dead and still strolling the halls definitely makes me the creepiest.